Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

A Note on Reviews

Unless otherwise noted, any books I review on this blog I have either purchased or borrowed from the library, and I do not receive any compensation (monetary or in-kind) for the reviews.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

President Trump’s half hour,
impromptu interview on "Fox & Friends" last Friday sent the media’s
fact checkers into overdrive this weekend. Everyone from PolitiFact to The New York Times to virtually all the Sunday morning national talk shows piled on, calling Trump a liar. But
the media can’t stop lying about what the president says. Sometimes it
can’t distinguish a legitimate point of disagreement from a lie. It is
no wonder that people have tuned out much of the constant attacks on
Trump.

Just take the hyperbole on Sunday’s Meet the Press.
Before playing a compilation of clips from Trump’s interview, moderator
Chuck Todd exclaimed: “Let me put together this list of just outright
misstatements, lies.” After showing the clips, Todd felt it necessary to
emphasize yet again that everyone knew the statements were false:
“Every single one of those things is absolutely not true.”

The
show had on two liberal and two conservative panelists, but it wasn’t
real balance as the conservatives were both “never Trumpers.” The guests
debated whether Trump was simply lying or whether he lacked the "mental
capacity" to know that he was spewing falsehoods. So
let’s review the first three statements that Todd claims are false.
Then we'll look at the one that he says is the “most ridiculous” of all.

Trump: “Well, no, there is no trade war.”

Whatever
one thinks of tariffs or Trump’s negotiating strategy, the president’s
tariff threats are more of a tiny skirmish than a full-blown “trade
war.” In 2017, the US imported goods worth about $3.9 trillion. Only about $29 billion of those imports were in steel, and the aluminum imports that will face tariffs were $14 billion. This amounts to $43 billion in imports of these two goods. $18 billion (41 percent) of that total came from China.

Friday’s announcement of $50 billion
in tariffs on Chinese electronics is more significant, but still a tiny
fraction of our overall goods trade. These tariffs don't affect 98
percent of all imports. Eighty-seven percent of imports from China are
unaffected. The average tariff rate on all imported goods will rise from
1.4 percent to just over 2 percent. The U.S. has among the lowest
tariff rates in the world, and this will hold true even if the
threatened increases go into effect. (Read more.)

Economists Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer wrote in The Wall Street Journal Friday that President Donald Trump deserves credit for the economy’s improvement, not former President Barack Obama. Moore,
a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and Laffer, the chairman of
Laffer Associates, write that “Mr. Obama might be justified in taking
credit for today’s economy if his successor had adopted and carried on
his policies. Instead, Mr. Trump has reversed nearly every Obama rule,
edict and law that he can legally overturn. At its core, the Trump
economic strategy wasn’t complicated: systematically repeal Mr. Obama’s
‘accomplishments’ -- the tax increases, the regulatory blitz on
business, the welfare expansions, the war on American fossil fuels, and
so on. As a result, the economy would pop like a cork pulled from a
shaken champagne bottle.”

Trump
didn’t need a “stimulus.” All he needed was to remove the shackles from
America’s entrepreneurs and let nature take its course. He let
entrepreneurs know that they could take risks without fear of being
punished for their success. Winners and losers would be determined by
the talents of the participants and not bureaucrats who wasted billions
on “shovel-ready” jobs that didn’t exist. It was Trump who let the
economic dogs out. (Read more.)

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